


Fall and Fallen

by Dorinda



Category: West Wing
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Episode Related, Illnesses, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-12
Updated: 2003-08-12
Packaged: 2017-10-18 06:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/186031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was a day they both collapsed, each in his own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall and Fallen

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place during the campaign flashback in episode 3x09, "Bartlet for America".

He lay in his hotel room missing the fever after it was gone. And that was ridiculous, he knew it was ridiculous. He knew the fever was dangerous. He and Abbey had gone over everything, the physiological processes, risk factors. He was the last guy who should go around with a temperature. Before Abbey had left for that thing, the women's dinner thing--the thing she'd wanted to get out of but he'd argued her back into--she had given him the regular injections plus a few things to help lower the fever, posthaste.

But there was something about a fever, sometimes. The way it melted reality at the edges, making everything a little softer but a little brighter. The way it unwound his thoughts just a bit--not so he felt stupid, but so his mind felt looser, making these easy sideways connections. Like dreaming without having to fall asleep.

So he missed the fever, at least a little bit, and of course he couldn't fall asleep for real. He lay flat on his back and stared at the lamp's glow on the ceiling and ached with shame he kept telling himself was irrational. You're sick, part of his mind insisted. A sick man. To which he could only answer fiercely, no, I'm not...not most of the time.

There was a brisk knock on the door, and he heaved himself out of bed (he felt much steadier, and he clung to that fact) and padded over to answer it, wondering if the doctor had forgotten something, or wanted to poke around at him a little more now that Abbey wasn't there to run interference. I was just getting to sleep, he practiced in his head. Just now. Perfectly fine.

But it was Leo at the door, and Jed stepped back reflexively to let him in.

"Hey, Leo," he said. "I was just resting."

Leo came in, shut the door with great care, and looked at him. Piercingly. And Jed wasn't sure what it was that first told him something was wrong, or whether it all hit him together: the blurry intentness of Leo's eyes; the way he stood, feet braced wide; the way he breathed, a little too heavily. Or maybe the smell, that smell that was faint but sickening in its import: not the whiskey on Leo's breath, not really, but the smell that whiskey had when it came through the pores, as if everything inside Leo had been drained away and replaced by that soft heady sourness.

Jed stepped back, unsteady again, though not from the ear infection. His legs hit the bed and he abruptly sat.

"...Oh." Every word that came to his lips felt wrong.

"They said you're sick," Leo said, his breathing too loud in the quiet room.

Not most of the time, Jed thought. But he just said, "It's nothing."

"How are you?" Leo said, coming to the bed, staring, intent.

Oh, holy God. Jed could see his eyes better now, and he was gone, he was really gone. His eyes were someone else's. Jed's mind raced for a split second, on the edge of panic. _Sana me Domine,_ came a sudden random thought, a psalm he couldn't number, _Heal me, O Lord, for my body is in terror; my soul too is utterly terrified._

"I'm okay," he said by rote. And then, very carefully: "How are you?"

Leo hesitated before waving the question away. "You should lie down," he said. "If you're sick, you should lie down." And even though Jed knew absolutely and without doubt how wrong things were, the worst thing of all was how clear, how reasonable Leo sounded. He doubted anyone else would know quite how bad it was.

He looked into Leo's eyes, searching for him. But Leo just gave a smile--a wrong smile, a smile that was absent, perfectly smooth and even--and put one hand on his shoulder. His hand was hot, even through Jed's T-shirt.

"Lie down," he said again. "I'll stay with ya."

So Jed lay down, his head beginning to ache, matching the pressure in his solar plexus. He knew it wasn't the fever. It was just that he'd been kicked, he'd had the wind knocked out of him, and he hadn't seen it coming.

Leo sat on the side of the bed and watched him for a while with those unfocused eyes. Jed looked back at him, trying to breathe past the fear and the grief.

"Hey," Leo said after a few minutes. But instead of finishing the thought he leaned and snapped off the bedside light.

"Leo?"

"Yeah," came his voice, and the mattress shifted slightly as he stretched out. Not quite close enough to touch, but the heat of him, the faint fog of alcohol, the deliberate sound of his breathing, it closed the distance.

Jed watched Leo's shadowy form in the darkness. "Get some sleep," he said at last, feeling like a hypocrite.

He both heard and felt a rasping chuckle in answer: "I will if you will."

"I can't." The truth was instinctive.

Leo turned to face him. "I know you can't," he said.

And underneath everything, there was the voice of the guy from a hundred, a thousand late nights, always there to catch him, steady and wise and so strong. Atlas, the world on his shoulders. Jed reached out and fumbled his hand onto Leo's arm, pressing gently, blinded by sorrow as much as by darkness.

There was a muffled, constricted noise in Leo's throat, and then a short silence. "Hey," he said after a moment. "There's something."

Jed waited. But Leo only drew heavy breaths in and out.

"Leo?"

"Yeah."

"There's something?"

Leo sighed. "Yeah."

Jed held on to Leo's arm, the suit sleeve fine and smooth in his grip. "Okay," he said.

But Leo's arm was knotting under his hand. And all at once, in one awkward, determined move, Leo reached out and took hold of him, moving against him, grasping and clutching both of his shoulders. One broad, strong hand slid up his neck to his jaw, and then the other. He heard Leo struggle to catch his breath and felt that breath against his skin.

"Leo." He softly touched Leo's side. "You're all right."

"Listen. Listen," Leo said, holding Jed's face between his warm hands, very close and urgent. "I have to tell you something."

"You can tell me anything."

"Listen," Leo said again. "There was a man and wife, they had a son. He had just come of age, he was about to leave them, to make his way in the world. And they were worried, they didn't know what he was going to be."

His voice began to settle into an echo of the old, familiar storytelling rhythm, and in the darkness Jed felt his hands and his words touch him, surround him.

"So the father, he puts a twenty dollar bill, a Bible, and a bottle of whiskey on the table. Then they hide--pretending they aren't home, see. And the man says to his wife, 'If our son takes the money, he'll be a businessman. If he takes the Bible, he'll be a priest. But if he takes the whiskey, I'm afraid our son will be a drunkard.'"

His mouth touched Jed's once, lightly. And as he spoke again, he rested their foreheads together.

"So the son comes home, and the parents are hiding, watching him. He looks at the table. He takes the twenty, holds it up to the light, nods, and stuffs it in his pocket."

Another touch of his mouth, soft and hot.

"Then he takes the Bible. And he kind of flips through it, and tucks it under his arm."

Now it felt like he was smiling. He let his mouth linger this time, barely touching, heat radiating off his skin. When he spoke, it was low and husky, and Jed heard him as if the words against his lips were going directly to his throat, to his stomach, to his heart.

"And then he picks up the bottle. He opens it...he smells it...and he smiles. He cradles it against his chest, and leaves the house to make his way in the world. The man, he turns to his wife and he says, 'Oh, God, it's worse than I ever could have imagined. Our son, he's going to be a politician.'"

There was a brief silence, a hitching of breath, and then Leo slowly nestled close against Jed's neck, against his shoulder. His mouth was tender there, his breath deeper and uneven, ragged, until cool dampness stung Jed's skin and he knew Leo was crying.

He wanted to say something. But they'd been here once before, at the very end of things, in that pit where there was nowhere farther to fall, and though he was a man of words his words were useless now. The only thing of use was him, he himself. He had his arms, his body. His belief. So he held Leo instead, and passed one trembling hand over his back, the nape of his neck, the softness of his hair. But because he was that man of words, he found himself translating his actions, he couldn't help it. Over and over, "I'm here," he whispered, and "I know," and "It's all right."

Leo's shuddering told him it clearly wasn't all right. But he had spent so much of himself all this time making Jed believe it was, and that it would be. Jed tried to give some of that back, with his hands and his warmth, and his voice.

He kept whispering those things, long after Leo's breath had steadied and his body went slack into sleep, his arm heavy over Jed's chest.

He mouthed them almost silently against Leo's temple, through the bitter scent of whiskey from his skin.

He breathed them as a prayer in the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the August 2003 challenge on the JedandLeo list, and posted under a different name. The rule: must be set pre-series, during the first campaign.


End file.
